Page 111 of The Villains of Winter

Elliott persisted, “You didn’t see the pain that was in her eyes. She really didn’t know.” Elliott could bear the blame, it wasn’t fair to throw any of it on anyone else. “Every inch of her was pained.”

He recognized himself within her. He empathized with her hurt of causing someone harm.

“Pain was in her eyes, Elliott.” James mocked the very thought of it. “Of course, you believe her. She perfected her artifice with you. She hunts down motherless boys for a reason. How many times did she exchange kisses with you and ask to be your mother in her pathological manipulation of you?”

She bathed me, James nearly disclosed, but he needed to focus on Elliott. Elliott was the last person he could protect from her. He had to break the intrigant’s illusion between them.

“You didn’t read the letters between us. She really cares about me…” Elliott whispered. Elliott couldn’t bring himself to expose the depths of what he’d endured. Every instrument of agony that trapped him in the torment of his mind. “It was not a façade.”

“You were a ploy. You need to understand that, Elliott. She plotted for you to watch Finch die to traumatize you for her dark punishment. She plotted his death from the very start.” James grasped Elliott’s face in his palms as though he could speak through to him with his words. He was incomprehensible. “Everyone I care about suffers because of her. Even you.” James would never forgive her for that. “I didn’t protect you. I will not make the same mistake twice.”

“It wasn’t your mistake. No one is at fault.” Elliott wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “We all tried our best for Finch.”

James asked him as if to drive a point. “What did she call herself with you? What were you with her?”

“Erôs.” Elliott thought briefly of her theatricality. “She referred to herself as Aphrodite with me. Why?”

“She believed she was my Athena,” James responded acidly. “I was her Alexikakos. Listen to me, Elliott–she believes she is a Hellenistic god that can interfere in our lives and punish us with mercurial fury if we dare to defy her will, her divine order, her godhood.”

She behaves like an ancient god.

Godhood? Elliott opened his mouth to mention that she drove Finch to the emergency room, breaking several highway laws to reach the emergency care unit in her caravan, but James cut off his words. He was convinced she was an entity of Machiavellian evil.

He was convinced he was the martyr to end her.

Elliott drove his own point. “Why would she help to save him if she was pure evil and she wanted him to suffer as punishment?” Elliott asked. None of it made sense. “Why would she be mindful of his illness at all? Wouldn’t she have left him there to die?”

“She wanted to kill him in front of everyone. She merely needed to be discreet.” James exhaled hard. “Finch dying was a casualty of her god complex. The entire education system at Æscwulf College is sanist and ableist without regard. Banebury buses in inner city kids with the expectation the urban kids will be thrown out as sacrifices. Banebury expects the orphans to be acclimated to dead bodies and therefore tolerant of ritual slaughter. Banebury discards the ill as a means to cull the unwanted. He was slain by her inhumanity.”

There. He said it. He exposed the truth of the ritual.

James released Elliott’s face from his hands, and he ran a ragged hand through his hair. He expelled another hard breath.

By Elliott’s expression, he was close to tears at the edges of his eyes. Elliott couldn’t handle the thought that when he was at his lowest, the letters never mattered. Her care never existed. His ears reddened, wounded.

James nearly ranted that even the U.S. military utilized Ancient Latin for valor while they conducted mass terrorism. Semper fidelis. Semper Paratus. Non sibi sed patriae. Ancient Latin was desecrated to appear admirable and honorable in the propagandized massacres. The University of Chicago conducted the Manhattan Project with famed atomic scientists and Nobel laureates that led to the obliteration of innocent Japanese civilians in nuclear warfare. Their knowledge was a weapon of desolation. Crescat scientia; vita excolatur.

Did Elliott never once notice how the Ancient Classics were utilized for stature, elegance, and prestige to conceal unspoken horror in academia?

When Elliott hiccuped, James realized he’d made a mistake. He miscalculated how deeply entrenched Elliott’s belief in the goodness of everyone was and how compassion for others wasn’t only a part of himself, it would destroy him if it shattered. Hope was all he had left. It registered within James that some people couldn’t perceive evil unless they overtly saw it themselves, and even when it was exhibited fully to them, their mind couldn’t comprehend it for the evil it was. Their minds could not conceive evil.

Vulgarity was fathomable to them, but irremediable evil was unfathomable.

Therefore, James accepted the revelation. He timed himself perfectly and waited patiently for Elliott to dry his eyes with his sleeve.

James softened the composition of his face. As though Elliott’s words had caused an epiphanic moment of the true meaning of empathy within James, there was a rearrangement of his features, the depression of his brows, the strain of his mouth, and he appeared ashamed of his outburst. With perfection, his voice lessened with a vulnerable inflection. “Of course, you’re right, Elliott. What if she really didn’t know?”

“I don’t think she meant to hurt him.”

“She really didn’t mean for any of this to happen, I don’t think.” James inhaled, as though he was coming down from anger, and just now returning to his normal self. Realizing the statements he’d raved and ravaged in anger. “I can’t believe I said that.”

“It wasn’t you. You weren’t yourself. Same thing happened to me with Lucien.”

“Man, that was awful of me, wasn’t it?” James laughed after a minute. “I’m really scared and worried about Finch. I think I convinced myself of a conspiracy.”

“I know. I’m really worried about him, too.” Elliott embraced him. “Of course, he’ll be alright. He’ll get better before we even know it.”

Elliott had to speak as if Finch was going to recover. He couldn’t bear Finch losing his life. Finch deserved to live more than anyone.